Let me say this right off the bat: I made this video in about 5 hours. Hope it doesn’t suck too hard! And now, back story.

In early 2005, I had just finished making two other Hana Yori Dango videos (my Reflections of Style 2 project video and “Love is Another Word for Regret”). Considering the length of HYD, and the amount of harddrive space that was being consumed by having all of the episodes ripped, I really didn’t want to let the footage go to waste. I wanted to make ANOTHER HYD video (because, you know… I’m damn obsessed with this series).

I then decided to make a little challenge for myself. I tried doing a little one-woman “Iron Chef” practice by making a video in two hours. After choosing a song, I was able to make the majority of the video in two hours, but I wound up spending a few more making tweaks and scene changes.

Since I did make this video quickly to practice for Iron Chef at AWA in September 2005, it’s very much a simple, lyric-driven, and character-focused video. It was nice not having to worry about effects, or all the little bells and whistles that people seem to thrive on nowadays. It felt like I was making a nice old-schoolish video, and I had a blast making this!

The video itself is a character profile video focusing on the series protagonist, Tsukushi Makino. At her super-elite school, she gets bullied by all the rich kids simply because she’s poor. The video shows her having to deal with these trials, and then overcoming obstacles so she can finally learn to be happy just being herself! Like I said, it’s a simple video (and yet another entry in the line of “female empowerment” videos that I seemed to have accumulated under my belt the last few years).

One of the hardest challenges for me was to not include ANY scenes featuring the main male characters in the series, particularly the members of the F4. I pretty much am OK about doing this, except for a quick shot of Tsukasa during the beach scene. It was just so damn hard trying to find shots of Tsukushi looking happy that I just couldn’t get around NOT using this scene. Oh well, close enough!

Despite not being fancy or heavy on the tech side, I think this video turned out pretty solidly in terms of story, scene choices, and timing (especially considering I managed to whip this thing up in a matter of hours). It was fun having a chance to make something quickly (ahhh, instant gratification has been fulfilled!), and with a series I love! Hope you like it, too! It was great gettng this “going back to basics” out of my system!